The Lost Bird (13 page)

This cannot be
, he thought, slumping back against the hard chair knobs. Eileen had never said, had never told him . . . There must be some other explanation.
He said: “Have you talked to your mother about this?”

Megan drew one hand slowly across her cheekbones. Moisture ran along the edge of her index finger. “I could see from the diaries that my mother has been in denial since the day you left her. She would never admit the truth. That’s why I came here. I hoped you would tell me the truth.”

The truth?
he thought.
What was the truth?
The quick, spastic sounds of her breathing invaded the space between them. He looked past her toward the window. The lights around Circle Drive shimmered in the black glass. His mind searched for the words to calm her suspicions, set his own mind at rest. This was not the past he remembered; this was not what he wanted. She was his brother’s child.

Finally he leaned across the coffee table and took her hand. “You are going to have to talk to your mom, Megan. Tell her what you’ve told me. Surely she’ll be able to explain . . .”

She yanked her hand away and propelled herself to her feet. “I’m wasting your time,” she said, starting for the entry. “I’ll be out of here first thing in the morning.”

He rose and followed. She already had the front door open. “I want to know the truth, too, Megan,” he said.

She swung around and fixed him with a long, questioning look. There was the smallest softening in her expression, or did he imagine it? “Come on.” He took her arm. “I’ll walk you to the guest house.”

The night was cool. Strips of white clouds floated like contrails across the sky. He guided her on the path through the wild grasses in the field and out along
Center Drive, past the old school, the church, down the narrow alley between the administration building and Eagle Hall, in and out of circles of light. At the guest house, he fumbled with the key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Megan slid past. He waited as she switched on the inside light. It sparkled in her hair. Her face was in shadows.

“Don’t leave tomorrow, Megan.” He placed his hand flat against the door to stop it from closing. “Stay for a while.”

“No thanks.”

“We’ll talk some more.”

When she didn’t reply, he said, “We could get to know each other. And I could use some help in the office.” It was an excuse, a lousy excuse but the best he could come up with at the moment. He couldn’t bear to let her go. Not yet, not with this matter unsettled between them. One extra day would give them a chance to talk. Even if a killer was about, Gianelli and Banner would also be about. Megan would be safe for one day.

He felt the sting of her gaze on him. After a moment she said, “I’ll think about it.”

11

F
ather John walked back across the grounds, scarcely aware of the slumbering buildings, the breeze nipping at his hands and face, the distant whir of a truck on Seventeen-Mile Road.
It cannot be
, he said to himself over and over.
Dear Lord, this must not be true.

He let himself into the residence and stopped in the hall. The creak of a floorboard, the smallest squeal of a closing door?—he couldn’t identify the sound. He waited, muscles tensing in his shoulders, hands balled into fists. Someone was here; he could sense the presence, the faintest whiff of perspiration.

He stepped into the living room. It was as they had left it: the straight-back chair pulled to the coffee table, the indentations in the soft cushions of the sofa. On he walked through the dining room, cupping the candles and blowing them out as he passed. In the kitchen, he saw Megan’s small black purse on the counter where she’d left it. A few feet away was the automatic coffeemaker, a couple of mugs, and a platter with two slices of cake. They hadn’t gotten to the coffee and cake before the world had imploded.

From his corner, Walks-On lifted his head and gave
him a half-lidded glance before snuggling back onto the rug. The kind of greeting the dog would have given an intruder, Father John knew. Walks-On was used to strangers, people passing through. He ran to visitors outside, red disk clenched in his jaws, hope in his eyes. What did the dog know of a killer?

Suddenly Father John saw the door. It was slightly ajar. He walked over, flung it open, and stepped out into the utility room. The back door hung open, swaying in the breeze. Down the stairs, the patio was dark and deserted, and beyond, the mission grounds lost in shadows.

He shut the outside door and threw the lock, then stepped back into the kitchen and locked that door. The tension began to dissolve in his muscles. He was the last one into the house earlier; perhaps he hadn’t closed the doors. The noise he’d heard could have been the wind catching at the back door and whistling into the kitchen. And yet . . . There was something in the air, the musty odor of perspiration.

Still feeling uneasy, he poured a mug of coffee, carried it down the hall into the study, and sank into the contours of the leather chair. Fatigue weighed on him like a heavy cloak. He reached for the lamp switch, then withdrew his hand, preferring to sip at the hot coffee and watch the moonlight angling through the window, forming patterns on the carpet, lapping at the papers on his desk. After a moment Walks-On wandered down the hallway, nails
tick-tick-ticking
on the hard floor. He flopped next to the chair and set a cold nose into the palm of his hand, as if to remind him he was not alone.

He was not alone! A young woman had wandered into his life. How could such a thing be possible—that
he could have a child and, all these years, not have known? It couldn’t be true.

The memories crowded in on him, like the black shadows shrinking the room. Their senior year together at Boston College, he and Eileen, and the slow unfolding in his mind, the gradual understanding of what he must do, how he was meant to live his life. Finally, the certainty of it. He had struggled against the certainty, like a bull ramming a stone wall. He had not asked to be called out from other men, from an ordinary life, like Abraham called to a new land and knowing he must go, regardless of what he may have wanted to do. He had loved her; he had wanted to be with her.

Three months after he’d entered the seminary, she had married his brother. The news had hit him like a punch in the stomach, a sickening thud that still reverberated inside him. She had forgotten him so easily, when he had known it would take years, a lifetime perhaps, to forget her. Had she hurried to marry Mike because she was pregnant? And did his brother know? Did that explain the years of polite coldness?

She had never let on . . . He’d had no idea. Had she told him, it would have ended his struggle. They would have been married, their lives different. It was hard to imagine: he, a family man, probably teaching history in some small college in New England today. If she had told him . . .

That was what bothered him, her silence. It was unlike her. What had attracted him to Eileen from the beginning was her forthrightness and honesty. Whatever she happened to feel or believe, she blurted out. It had led to many an argument, shouting matches at times. She was his equal in stubbornness, but there
had been no periods of brooding silence, no imaginary wrongs looming between them. They had been honest with each other. He had told her from the beginning he felt called to be a priest. He had struggled against the calling, and she had known he was struggling. Surely she would have told him?

The red numerals on the clock at the corner of his desk glowed 10:42. He got to his feet and walked into the hall. Removing the phone from the table at the foot of the stairs, he started up to bed, trailing the cord behind him, an old habit. He always brought the phone to the top landing at night in case someone needed a priest. It never left his mind that he was a priest. His legs were slow moving, the climb up the stairs an effort. He flipped the switch at the top. A white light shone down the narrow hall, past the closed doors to the bedrooms and bathroom. He started toward his room at the far end, then stopped at Father Joseph’s door. He’d been on his way to take a closer look at Joseph’s things when Elena had stopped him on the stairs. You’ve got a visitor, she’d said.
You’ve got a daughter.

He pushed open the door and found the switch. A dim light splashed over the room. He grimaced at the neatness. Elena had put everything back together after his rampage last night: she knew what he had been looking for. Instinctively, he started to back away. Gianelli had already searched the room. What could he hope to find?

His mind rephrased the question: what did he hope to avoid? His own room and the assault of memories, old emotions? Despite the tiredness that dragged at him like a heavy chain, sleep would be a long time coming, if it came at all, and while he waited, the
thirst would come, invisible shackles slipping over him.

He walked over to the desk and began thumbing through the papers: Sunday bulletins, a syllabus for the class Father Joseph had scheduled on the meaning of the Christian message, various magazines. He jerked open the drawer and lifted out a writing tablet. A quick flip through the pages. Blank.

Slowly he looked around the room, surprised for a moment at his own reflection in the mirror above the bureau: pale face shadowed with fatigue, shoulders hunched in exhaustion. Perching on the bed, he began pulling books from the bookcase a couple of feet away. He turned each one over in his hand, examining the titles. A compilation of philosophy. Works of philosophers from Aristotle to Kierkegaard. What had he expected? Joseph Keenan was a renowned philosopher. His own bookcases were filled with history books, and he was hardly a renowned historian.

He picked up the large, red leather book on the top shelf. On the front, embossed in gold, was the word Bible. It was surprisingly heavy, the leather soft and nubby. He opened the cover and began gently turning the tissue-thin pages. A small bulge protruded into the center. Holding the book over the bed, he gently winnowed the pages until a newspaper clipping folded into a small square dropped onto the bedspread.

He set the Bible down and unfolded the clipping, the paper brittle in his hands, the edges ragged with age. The date in small black print at the top was September 26, 1964. In the center, a gray-smudged photo of a young woman smiling into the camera, chin tilted in a haughty challenge, a white nurse’s cap topping the long dark hair. A two-column headline in large
black letters ran above the photo:
LOCAL NURSE FOUND DEAD
. Below, in smaller letters:
Body Discovered on Banks of Wind River. Police Call Death Suicide.

He read quickly through the article: Dawn James, twenty-four-year-old Lander resident, graduate of Lander High School and Casper College. Nurse at Markham Clinic. Survived by sister, Mary James of Riverton.

Father John stared at the name, trying to place the woman. Had he met her at some point in Riverton? Been introduced after Mass one Sunday? Suddenly it hit him. Mary James had called the mission yesterday, and Elena had taken the message. He’d pushed the message aside, not recognizing the name, thinking he would return the call later.

He refolded the clipping and walked down the hall to his own room, where he laid it inside the top drawer of his bureau—a flat packet of yellowing newspaper on a stack of white T-shirts. A clipping that Father Joseph had kept for thirty-five years. It came to his mind that perhaps he was not the only priest who had spent years praying for forgiveness. But whatever had been between the twenty-four-year-old nurse who had shot herself and Joseph Keenan no longer mattered. They were both dead.
May their souls rest in peace.

He slammed the bureau drawer shut, consigning the clipping to its own privacy. His thoughts turned to Mary James. What painful memories had crashed over her at the news of Joseph Keenan’s murder? He would call the woman first thing in the morning.

12